The landscape of telephony is changing rapidly today. Traditional telephony networks no longer carry all the telephone traffic to a business. Some voice traffic is present today on public networks such as the Internet. This is termed voice on network ("VON"). Blending VON traffic with traditional telephone traffic presents difficult problems to corporations. These problems are found in both person-to-person and call center environments. Over time, a significant mix of voice traffic will shift to packet network sources. This shift will create a significant need to bring packet voice traffic into the existing telephony environments. For some years there will be a large market for adaptive rather than replacement systems.
The technology for packetizing voice for sending on networks is well known. Routing of packetized voice and the solution of inter-working of packetized voice in traditional telephony environments is still an area in need of significant innovation. A typical scheme for delivering VON calls to a PBX is to deliver VON calls to a gateway device which converts VON call traffic to T1 or analog. Output from this gateway looks like regular telephony traffic to the PBX. This approach enjoys the benefit of simplicity. Unfortunately much routing information and interactivity is lost in this arrangement. Calls from a packet network carry useful information relating to the caller and the caller's interests as well as history of interaction with a company's data systems such as Web servers. This call-related information is useful in forming accurate routing and meaningful dialogue with the caller--whether the dialogue is audio, video, or web interactive.
Calls to individuals in a company typically need less of this type of routing and interaction than calls to call centers. Due to the volume of calls handled, call centers must formalize the interaction and routing of calls. Individuals need routing and caller interaction but on a more dynamic basis. For instance, an individual needs to get calls routed to their current location--which may change. A caller also needs to be able to deliver messages and receive delivery of messages meant for their ears only. Whether calls are made to call centers or to individuals, there are significant ways to make these interactions more sophisticated and more valuable when the call is received through the network. However, this benefit is lost in conventional system because gateways strip out voice content and separate it from other call-related information.
As the shift to Voice on Network (VON) traffic occurs corporations need ways to bring this traffic into their existing networks. For the next several decades corporations will need a good way to handle both circuit switched voice calls and VON calls. Ultimately, the choice to replace existing infrastructure switching with all VON may occur. The same infrastructure used to facilitate the coexistence of VON with circuit switched voice needs to be capable of replacing circuit switched voice.